


Ah, remember me (I used to live for music)

by lurknomoar



Category: Imperial Radch Series - Ann Leckie
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, Gratuitous references to melodramatic musical theatre, Non-Graphic Violence, Radchaai culture and Radchaai entertainment, Skel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-17
Updated: 2017-12-17
Packaged: 2019-02-15 13:17:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,099
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13031937
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lurknomoar/pseuds/lurknomoar
Summary: A drawn-out annexation, a hammered dulcimer, an old-fashioned entertainment titledSovereign of Tavern Dancersand the story of how One Esk first found its voice.





	Ah, remember me (I used to live for music)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sigaloenta](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sigaloenta/gifts).



> First of all, thank you for the brilliant and slightly intimidating prompt. I know enough about ancient history to know I shouldn't attempt Space Romans. However I tried to stay true to the spirit of the prompt by cramming the story full of references to something I'm enthusiastic about: weird old music and its cultural context. All the music I refer to is real, some pieces might be recognizable, others hopelessly obscure. This is Breq's backstory, but it's only her story by default as I am, first and foremost, writing about One Esk.
> 
> Note that I followed Radchaai pronoun conventions throughout, and I used a grammatically Radchaai narrative voice even when describing characters who would not necessarily have used those pronouns to describe themselves.
> 
> The title is an excerpt from Leonard Cohen's 'First We Take Manhattan,' although almost any line from almost any Leonard Cohen song would have worked just as well.

The dulcimer had been in Lieutenant Vonne’s quarters from the moment she accepted her assignment and took her place on the Esk Deck of Justice of Toren. In those three and a half years, she never played it, never even took it out of its box, never unwrapped the little hammers from the protective rags she, or some thoughtful servant, had wound around them. Ship only knew what was in the unassuming box propped in the corner of the room, because ship had to know everything, and ship – or more accurately, One Esk Eight – had opened the box to reveal the instrument, a well-made but not particularly valuable hammered dulcimer. The board was mere plastic, the surface printed with brown veins to create a close semblance of real wood, but the strings, stretched lengthwise across the boards with a few perpendicular strings for resonance after the Kamondian fashion, were high-quality steel, and in good repair.

It was no wonder the Lieutenant had little time for music, since she was assigned to finish the drawn-out annexation of the Pelagic system. Pelagic was not what the inhabitants called themselves, but since they called themselves and each other by a multitude of names, some reverential, some neutral, some provoking instant blood feuds, depending on which planet, moon or station they hailed from within the system, the Radchaai collectively decided that there was no possible benefit in indulging their endonyms, and named the system after the endless oceans of its many water-covered moons, perfect both for trawl-fishing and kelp plantation.

The annexation of the system was not nearly the most perilous in the history of the Radch, or even the most difficult in the life of the troop carrier Justice of Toren, but it was nevertheless bloody and slow and characterised by unexpected recurrences of desperate, suicidal resistance. Lieutenant Vonne had her hands full.

Ship found that Lieutenant Vonne was not incompetent. She was not brilliant either, but she considered each decision thoroughly and to the point of boredom before taking action, and that saved more lies than it cost. Justice of Toren thought of her as just another baby lieutenant, but One Esk found it hard to do so, not least because Lieutenant Vonne was quite a lot older than young officers tended to be, having served two decades as a navigation-and-charting instructor on Gorela training station before she got shipped off to the edges of Radchaai space with a slew of other non-combatant officers, to fill the officer shortage resulting from the Pelagic resistance’s immense casualties.

The first time the lieutenant saw combat, not ship-to-ship fighting but planetside war that got mud on her boots, with no vacuum to erase the sounds or smells, with no distance to mitigate the sight of the bodies, she almost threw up. One Esk was aware of the fluttering struggle of her heartbeat, the harsh gasps of her breath, and appreciated that she stayed on her feet to give more orders, even though the ship, acting through its ancillaries, could have easily neutralised the assailants without her contribution. Still, One Esk developed a tentative fondness for her - nothing like her attachment to her previous officer, the sharp-eyed Lieutenant Loerin, dead before she reached twenty – but fondness nevertheless.

It was only after the various subgroups and alliances of the Pelagic were pacified, and the position of the appointed governors was deemed relatively stable, that most Justices were recalled to Tstur, the nearest provincial palace, to be redirected towards their next assignment. Only one ship, the Justice of Hodiut remained to supervise the system. It was in the bland, excruciating boredom of gatespace that Lieutenant Vonne finally unpacked the dulcimer.

She sat on her bunk, placed the instrument across her knees and played a few notes. She was very much out of practice, but clearly well-trained, the rapid scales unfolding under her hands with grace, despite the odd false chord. After some warm-up, she played through a longer piece, humming some words under her breath. Judging from the repetitive tune, it must have been a narrative poem of some sort. Ship listened to the song through the microphones placed at intervals in the panels that made up Lieutenant Vonne’s quarters. One Esk also listened, mending a tear in Lieutenant Vonne’s shirt and polishing her boots and disassembling and reassembling her personal firearm to ensure it was functional. One Esk did not ask a question, but Vonne must have interpreted her silent presence as curiosity, or maybe she wished to speak anyway.

‘It’s an old historical ballad, about revenge. A soldier finds out that her daughter was misused by the planetary governor, so she sets out to slaughter the governor’s heirs.’ Lieutenant Vonne played a few careless notes on the dulcimer. ‘Of course it’s all a lie. The assassination attempt was politically motivated, the soldier belonged to a faction that wished to discourage off-planet trade and return to a protectionist policy. Maybe the governor did misuse her daughter, but that’s hardly relevant.’

The Lieutenant continued to play, and started to sing in a thin but not unappealing voice. The words were in Radchaai, but their slight unwieldiness, the usage of rare grammatical formulae to push a line into correct scansion, seemed to imply that it was a translation.

‘Eh, it’s not the same,’ she sighed, and put the hammers down halfway through the chorus. ‘I used to sing these back home, and I could sing some of them with the other instructors at Gorela. I used to hear the music we made together, and now all I hear is my own horrid voice.’ She shuddered.

‘Has the lieutenant considered playing music with the other officers?’ asked One Esk. Lieutenant Vonne was not a favourite, but she was favoured enough to merit advice.

‘Why not,’ she murmured, although she did not seem wholly convinced.

*

Lieutenant Vonne entered the decade room with One Esk in tow, gestured for One Esk to put the instrument down on the table, opposite where the others were sitting, and she greeted them with stiff but jovial politeness. They both responded, but with the slightest show of restraint: they were both noticeably younger than Vonne, and on active military duty from the moment they took the aptitudes.

They were Four Esk Lieutenant Jand, having a hearty breakfast of crisp biscuits and reconstituted fruit paste, and Two Esk Lieutenant Neishon, chewing on some salted roots and idly complaining about whoever meddled with the thermostat on the Var deck bath facilities. Vonne thought she really should have been asleep: apparently Neishon didn’t adjust to the schedule change as well as she said she did, but she also hasn’t resorted to sleep aids, still hoping to get through her own shift with the help of heavy-duty stimulants. It was slightly worrisome, but if ship didn’t think it was cause for concern, Neishon had no reason to interfere.

‘Oh, is that a dulcimer?’ asked Jand, after wiping her mouth on a napkin. ‘Isn’t that like a piano you play with your bare fingers?' 

‘Jand, get your mind out of the garbage chute,’ laughed Neishon. ‘That’s the harp, this must be something else. How _do_ you play it, Lieutenant?’

‘With hammers,’ answered Vonne, somewhat unsure if she was being mocked. To demonstrate, she played a few scales: the room’s acoustics were worse than what she was used to, but even the relative drabness of the sound didn’t quite dampen the joy of live music.

‘I wished to ask if any of you would like to sing with me,’ she added, emboldened by her own chords.

‘I’ve time to kill,’ shrugged Neishon, ‘and Jand also has most of an hour until her shift. What can you play? Wait, wait, can you play the humming song, the one from that entertainment, you know, where a captain enters into a temporary contract with a pretty planetside barbarian, but it turns out the barbarian doesn’t comprehend Radchaai customs and falls into jealous desperation, you know…’

‘ _The Lover of the Dragonfly_?’ interjected Jand, a hand covering her face to hide that she was speaking with her mouth full.

‘That’s the one!’ exclaimed Neishon. ‘Play that one, if you know it.’

‘I do,’ said Vonne, ‘the chords are straightforward, and the lyrics are easy to remember.’

Jand snorted a laugh: the lyrics of the song in question consisted entirely of humming.

Vonne began playing, the strings shimmering with the tentative early-morning brilliance of the song, and when she started humming the tune, her thin voice was borne upwards by the cut-glass notes of Neishon and the untrained but powerful baritone of Jand. While they sang, One Esk wiped the crumbs and the spilled arrak from the abandoned half of the table. At the same time, she checked the filters in the air vents, which didn’t yet require replacement, only a brief wipe. The third segment, with no specific task allotted to her, stood quietly in the corner. The other two endeavoured to be quiet as well, not disturbing the music, listening.

‘Do the other one!’ asked Jand impatiently, before the final note stopped resonating on the strings.

‘Which other one?’ asked Vonne, laying a gloved hand across the string to silence them.

‘It’s not from the same entertainment, but the same cycle. The famous one that goes _none shall sleep_.’

‘This one?’ asked Vonne, playing a few more notes, the beginnings of the tune.

‘That’s the one. The one she sings the night before the last round of ritual combat.’

Vonne played, the others sang, lost in a song about sleepless vigil in cold chambers and about the surety that righteous victory will arrive with the dawn: Jand even belted out the high held notes of the last triumphant line, where Neishon fell silent to let the instrument carry the tune instead.

Vonne looked up from the strings with an almost unrestrained smile, and the others asked for one more song, which turned into two, then three, then ten. Neishon took out a polished grey ceramic flask filled with arrak. Judging by the smell, it was of passable quality, but strong and so dry that it felt caustic on the tongue. She poured a small cupful to Vonne, a slightly larger cupful to herself, and despite her token protestations, mixed a swig’s worth into Jand’s already-cold tea. They drank and they sang, songs of lost love and betrayed trust and loyalty unto death, songs that all of them have heard a dozen times in entertainments and entertainment remakes and broadcasts and the little music chits featuring individual songs. Much of what they sang was composed for professional entertainers, and used such a wide vocal range that Jand and Neishon had to trade lines between the two of them, singing solos as duets between a low-voiced and a high-voiced self, to a somewhat comical effect. They might have noted the comedy if it wasn’t overwhelmed with the pathos of the music and the drink.

‘One last song,’ said Jand, ‘and then I really must go. Play us something easy.’

Neishon gave her a look of reproachful gratitude: singing as she did, forcing volume into her thin falsetto voice, must have been painful after a good dozen songs, even if the pain was dulled somewhat by the warmth of the arrak. Vonne was also flush with drink, well on her way to drunkenness but not quite there yet, only her words were a little louder, her eyes a little brighter, and her hands on the dulcimer somehow more skilled: alive and playfully quick, like a silver-scaled fish wriggling and dodging against the current.

‘How about _Daughter of the Mountain Range_?’ she mused. ‘It’s unreasonably high, but it’ll be quite easy if only I transpose it a little.’

‘What’s _Daughter of the Mountain Range_?’ asked Jand.

‘What is it from?’ asked Neishon, with half a second’s delay, quite probably due to the drink.

‘It’s from _Sovereign of Tavern Dancers_ ,’ explained Vonne incredulously. ‘You must have heard it a dozen times, it’s the most well-known piece by Merita Koemov.’

‘Oh, it’s Koemov,’ giggled Neishon. ‘I didn’t know people still listened to her stuff. I mean it’s about a hundred years old, and it takes real music survive that long.’

‘Isn’t it real music?’ asked Vonne, her hammers idly marking chords on the dulcimer, but not hitting them.

‘Well, it’s catchy enough,’ shrugged Neishon, ‘but it still sounds like a very clever barbarian’s approximation of what music is supposed to be.’

‘What’s uncivilised about Koemov?’ asked Vonne. ‘She served ten years on the Sword of Palotash, and she worked diligently to create quality entertainment with stories that were relevant to the lives of citizens.’

‘Well maybe,’ chimed in Jand, ‘but she wasn’t a born citizen. After her planet was annexed, she learned the language, changed her name, cut her clothes and hair to Radchaai fashion and it’s good that she did, but all that doesn’t make her a paragon of propriety.’

Vonne was quiet. Her cheeks felt hot and she did not raise her eyes from the dulcimer as she scrambled for an answer.

‘Didn’t you know?’ asked Neishon, ‘It happens sometimes, I suppose, that some newcomer is quick-witted enough to make it in the Radch, they make themselves a fixture, and then a few years pass and everyone forgets where they came from. Well, almost everyone.’

Neishon laughed, and Jand joined her, but Vonne could not. Subjects that had not come up for years were suddenly out in the open. During the annexation they talked of strategy and losses and sometimes of mere survival, and while the other officers did consider Vonne an outsider, they mostly put it down to her age and her unfamiliarity with shipside life. They never asked about her house, she never spoke of it, and here, on the edges of Radchaai space, where nobody knew much of anybody else, everybody assumed she must be of some minor but respectable line. Her manners were proper if stiff, and her coat sparkled with pins, even though most of them were synthetic jade, tokens of gratitude from students she prepared for their exams in advanced navigation. Even the lack of ancestral drinkware did not become apparent, since the officers stationed on the Pelagic frontier – and many other contentious frontiers in that era – developed the habit of using, and sometimes even wearing looted goods as proof of their military victories. The silvered cedarwood drinking cup Vonne claimed after the four-day siege of the regent’s palace on Lunar Station 14B was worth far more than a full tea set of thousand-year-old blown glass from the distant centre of the Radch itself.

But here she was, in a time of relative peace and rest for the first time in years, and all it took was something as meaningless, as ridiculously trivial as a Koemov tune to reveal her as the daughter of fish farmers from a line of fish farmers on recently annexed border planet.

She took a deep breath. She wanted to be back at Gorela station, surrounded by familiar people and familiar starfield processing algorithms. She wanted to cry. She wanted, really badly, to sober up.

‘Well I suppose it’s high time you took your shift,’ she said in the end, turning to Lieutenant Jand, choosing to completely ignore Neishon. She was aware that her voice sounded the slightest bit wrong, somehow brittle. She also knew that while she might still eat her meals with the other two, and still count on them when it came to running the ship and countering enemy offensives, she would probably not get to sing with them again. It would give too much away.

‘Thank you for the music,’ responded Jand, quite peaceable, without a hint of the condescension she had for barbarians.

‘Thank you indeed,’ added Neishon, and there, there she could feel the note of incomprehension shading into contempt. She picked up the dulcimer, nodded her goodbyes, and sped off.

Sitting on her bunk, the walls of her quarters crowding in on her, the arrak hit her properly. She felt hot and shivery and uncoordinated, but she no longer wanted to cry. She wanted – she wanted to sing.

‘One Esk,’ she called, in addition to signalling her with a wave of her hand. ‘One Esk, sing with me. The other officers think it’s below their dignity to sing Koemov. They probably wouldn’t think it proper to sing Kratoviz either, or Branah, that’s all too uncivilised. But if someone has the right ancestors, or pretends well enough, they get to make entertainments about bedservants who assassinate their betters, then chuck themselves out of the airlock, and the whole thing is somehow proper. Hyr’s cock, it’s galling!’

‘Sir?’ said One Esk Fourteen, standing to attention in front of the bed.

‘Bring the others,’ snapped Vonne, somewhat embarrassed to be seen in such a state, even by an ancillary. ‘All of them. Even the ones who are asleep.’

‘Yessir,’ answered One Esk Fourteen, and did not move: it was far more efficient to gather its segments without contacting them in person. One Esk woke up, while it also put down a welding torch, replaced the gun it was cleaning in the holster, and put a ration of skel back in the storage device. Soon it was at Lieautenant Vonne’s door, but all twenty of its segments did not fit into the room, so six of them waited in the corridor.

‘Sing with me,’ asked Lieutenant Vonne once more, resettling her dulcimer on her knees.

‘The _Daughter of the Mountain Range_?’ asked One Esk Twelve.

‘Yes. Wait, no. Ship knows all sorts of things, so I suppose I don’t got to show you, you must know the _Distinguished Aide-de-Camp_.’

‘Yessir,’ responded One Esk Nine. The entertainment in question was broadcast routinely over multiple channels some sixty years back, the overwrought story of a faithful aide-de-camp who diligently serves (and subtextually, kneels to) her Fleet Captain, even though she knows that her beloved captain will never offer her a kind word, let alone patronage. Of course, this being an entertainment, the lowly aide-de-camp turns out to be the wealthy daughter of a noble house, unjustly exiled due to her parent’s foolishness, and in the end she is the one to offer patronage to her former captain.

‘Well then,’ said Vonne, ‘we’ll sing the station song, won’t we?’

One Esk nodded, and quickly ran over the score. The station song was one of the high points of the entertainment, sang when the capricious fleet captain holds a great feast with fresh fruit and fine wines and invited musicians, but the aide-de-camp is deemed too low-ranked to attend, and has to wait outside, on the concourse. The captain sends her a single glass of arrak as a grand gesture of magnanimity, and the aide-de-camp drinks it, cursing her exile and ill fortune. She starts to sing, but notes that she no longer has musicians or singers to accompany her, and in her desolation, she asks Station itself to play her accompaniment. Somewhat applicable to Lieutenant Vonne’s situation, and definitely applicable to her mood.

‘We don’t need the recitativo,’ murmured Vonne, half to herself, half to the ancillaries. ‘We’ll go from _sing Station, sing for me until the speakers splinter, for I too splinter with unhappy passion_. Ready?’

One Esk nodded, inhaled, and sang.

Lieutenant Vonne knew that ancillaries rarely made a sound. Ancillaries were ship, and ship didn’t talk to itself, ship only spoke to people, and only when necessary. She was used to the silent presence of her unit, although somewhat less used to it than the other officers were, since there was little need for ancillaries on her old station, far from the battlefields. She did not know if ancillaries were even capable of singing in any appreciable way, but at that moment, she did not quite care.

Justice of Toren knew that ancillaries had needs, and that fulfilling those needs whenever possible led to increased efficiency and longevity in segments, over the long run. Not that there was a long run, when it came to annexations like the last one, but it nevertheless took good care of its ancillaries until they were clearly beyond repair. Human bodies needed food and drink, and ancillaries were fed adequately. Human bodies needed rest and exercise, and ancillaries were kept on a regular schedule of sleep and drills whenever possible. Most human bodies needed sexual release, almost all needed some sort of physical closeness, and ship took care of that. But still it knew ancillaries did not live like humans did, and that there were dozens of variables it could possibly adjust to improve the functioning of its organic components. It had occurred to Justice of Toren before that one of those variables was speech: humans spoke often, and often spoke loud, while ancillaries spent most of their time in silence.

This was what ship could not have known:

 

That One Esk One was raised in a conventship from the age of five, traveling from planet to planet, station to station in a large and sparsely inhabited system, holding services to anyone who would listen, blessing and purifying their lands, their livestock, their children, living off their donations of food and repairwork. She could have left every year on the Day of Choice and still she always remained. She could imagine no better life than working shipside in the faded green veils and patched coveralls of the devout followers of Iinboe. When she stood to give praise, surrounded on all sides by her siblings-in-faith, and with them sang _oh flower of flowers oh light of lights, bitter is thy torture_ , she was one with the divine.

*

That One Esk Four had been assigned the morning waker of her work brigade, rousing herself fifteen minutes before the others, and going from bunk bed to bunk bed, clapping and singing in her rough, strong voice, singing _if you want a fair bride, you’ll find her in the dew, if you’re up before the dew has dried, she will come to you._ Of course there was little dew in the hot equatorial summer, and none of them had time to go outdoors before their shift started. Still, the fifteenth precision-welding brigade was always up on time, and the other workers paid their reliable waker one sweetbar each from their weekly ration.

*

 That One Esk Six worked the fields even in the cold season, loosening the unyielding soil so the tender shoots of berryvine could take root, singing all the while to make the backbreaking work slightly more bearable. It never occurred her to complain of her blistered fingers and tired feet, for everyone she knew lived with blisters and with unrelieved exhaustion. But they also sang the same groaning, mournful songs: _the grapes are ripening, the vines are bending, the leaf is curling, two poor servants would go work in the fields, but they have no bread._

*

That One Esk Seven sang the same working song in the comfort of her blue-bricked manor house, well-dressed and well-fed, picking out the chords with soft uncalloused hands. The guests at her dinner all drank the berrywine harvested on her lands, praising it both with tipsy honesty and in the dishonest hope of getting a trade commission. She enjoyed the power she held over all her guests, and did not even think of the power she held over the tenants on her land, as she stood from her velvet armchair to belt our the refrain to the song about the two poor servants: _they have red onions in their knapsacks, bitter on their own. Oh for the poor, for the servant, dinner is sparse._ Her guests clapped, her page refilled her goblet, and she never wondered how her servants dine.

*

 That One Esk Ten wanted to be an entertainer. Of course a barefoot villager like her couldn’t get into the acting academies, let alone into the big off-planet studios of the Radchaai, but that didn’t stop her from wanting. The whole settlement had one little non-portable viewer, and it took her a good month to scrape together the cost of a single broadcast chip, but she always remembered what she’d seen, and she made up the bits she had forgotten, telling the story and singing the songs in the village square. For an hour, the tattered shawl she wrapped around her waist became a veil of the finest silk bordered with silver lace, and the broom she held in her hand was a matt black ceremonial rifle. The first time she sang out the final notes, _cast off your futile sorrows, the day of rejoicing has dawned,_ there was applause, and her neighbours helped her save up for the next chit. She wasn’t an entertainer, but she was the next best thing.

*

That One Esk Thirteen died singing. She knew the corpse soldiers were coming, and she knew there was nothing left for her to do. The city was as good as dead, with the dams bombed and the water levels rising still, after the first deadly wave swept through it. For a moment, she imagined fighting, imagined bashing in as many of their hateful heads as she could, but even as an idle wish it was ridiculous. They had armour, and all she had was her old shortbow, good enough for hunting toads but not much else. She sat down on a pile of bricks that some hours ago had been her home, and waited, singing a song she had learned from her mother’s mother. _Oh god my god, cause the waters to flood so they will carry me to my mother’s window._ When they took her out from cryo, she was, dazed and panicked and shaking, still singing.

*

 That One Esk Eighteen was the best pleasure-singer on her station. She had started small, with street singing and tawdry gigs in other people’s cramped quarters, but in four years, she was the headliner at a proper nightclub, swaying centerstage while the clientele was bidding for an hour alone with her – the cost was now in the triple digits and climbing. To the left, her musicians struck up a new song on the dulcimer: they did play barehanded, and the few visitors who came from the faraway Radch shuddered in delicious outrage. She clicked her thigh-high boots, walked forward and sang _they dare to tell me I’m not beautiful, but I’m the starry sky itself, I’m abandon itself when my eyes glow with desire in the night_. Someone at the back of the room sprang to her feet and bid, in an unsteady voice, fifteen hundred.

*

That One Esk Twenty was not a singer, but songs were the easiest way to remember what mattered. All songs were songs of revolution, even the ones about the rain or the plum harvest, the ones about ribbons in your lover’s hair or the red glint of songbirds’ feet. All songs were in her own language and not in Radchaai, and that made every note a strike against the oppressor. In a land where few people could read, and those who could read had nothing to read but craven collaborationist drivel, songs were the only thing that could convince her to take up arms, and the best way she had of convincing others. _Come, valiant ones, let us do battle to safeguard our sacred freedoms with the thunder of cannons and the clash of swords._ She was full of fear and doubt, but when the whole guerrilla unit sang it, huddled around the peat fire, she was willing to face the might of an empire, certain in the justice of her cause.

 

And twenty voices sang out in unison, singing a sentimental old entertainment tune about an exiled heir’s melodramatic self-pity, twenty lungs filled with recycled air, twenty mouths filled with recycled words, twenty bodies rejoicing in breaking a silence, in finally singing something, anything out loud.

Vonne noted that singing with the ancillaries might be an enjoyable activity in her off hours, although she promised herself she would go about it in a less dramatic and much less drunk manner the next time. One Esk noted that Lieutenant Vonne seemed much calmer and happier, and resolved to proactively suggest music sessions whenever the lieutenant seemed particularly stressed. Ship noted that singing seemed to improve the wellbeing of One Esk ancillaries, which meant the behaviour should be allowed to continue unless it interfered with the unit’s functioning. The ancillaries noted nothing, but leftover notes of music still flickered in their minds, like sound trembles in the hollow metal of a bell long after it is struck.

*

Centuries later, on the other end of Radchaai space, with Lieutenant Vonne long dead and the Pelagic system long transfigured from contested frontier to a long-established provincial palace, One Esk sings. All of her ancillaries have been destroyed and replaced multiple times, and still the singing remains. Her newest baby lieutenant was slightly unnerved by the humming at first, but got used to it in a few days, stopped snapping at the ancillaries to be silent. One time, miserably hungover and homesick, she even asked One Esk to sing her a lullaby, but was then too mortified at her own weakness to ask ever again, and took sleep aids instead. The lieutenant sleeps, and ten of One Esk sleep also, while two are repairing the faulty lighting panel in one of the massive hangars on the Hydroponics Deck, and the rest are scrubbing the narrow white walkways between the skel tanks. One Esk Fifteen, on its knees trying to scrape up a foul-smelling spill of nutrient liquid, starts singing: _I’ll take your fuckin pennies and I’ll make you’re bed all right, but I’m sad to say that none of you will sleep in them tonight, and you still don’t have an inkling who I am._

It’s an old song from what used to be the Pelagic system, a song in a language that isn’t dead yet, only well on its way to dying. It’s about a ship, although the phrasing doesn’t make it clear if it’s a starfaring ship, or one of the moondwelling Pelagic people’s sleek wind-powered crafts. More than about the ship, it’s about an abandoned captain waiting for her ship’s return, not knowing if the ship still exists, not sure if it ever existed at all, and yet hoping, singing out with a strength beyond despair. Seven more bodies join in for the refrain: _and a ship, a black freighter bristling with cannons, is coming back for me._

*

[[MUSIC GLOSSARY]](http://quietblogoflurk.tumblr.com/post/169226947855/ah-remember-me-music-glossary)


End file.
